Mr. Bernard Byrne:

I do not think there is anything in the Paradise Papers that is in any way remotely interesting from that point of view. They are comments that people have made and on which they have put articles together. I am trying to bring the committee through the factual series of events.

Over eight years from 2004, the Revenue Commissioners put in place 14 High Court orders in respect of AIB. The reason the High Court process is in place is that a judge must consider the details and a specific request to determine if there is enough evidence to support the disclosure of the data. What will happen in an investigation such as this is that one will start in a certain place, more information will be discovered and there will then be a separate request. There is a sequence of events which in this case took place over eight years. The chairman of the Revenue Commissioners has given evidence to the committee that overall they recovered €1 billion in tax on the offshore accounts. I have no information or evidence which indicates from where it came or which customers or accounts were involved. That is the Revenue Commissioners' information, not ours. We complied with every single one of the orders. There has been some commentary on that matter in the newspapers, but we are satisfied we did everything we possibly could have. It culminated in 2014 in the conclusion of the High Court order process.

This relates to data from the 1990s. There were incomplete data in terms of paper files and records in AIB. The Revenue Commissioners were not able to be fully satisfied about the accuracy of the records so there was a settlement by AIB in 2014 with the Revenue in respect of offshore accounts where there were incomplete data and it could not be evidenced as to what happened. The settlement took place in respect of the tax year 1998 and it was €10.7 million. That is the full position that took place in respect of how that process worked with all those offshore accounts.

My general comment, which I was asked about, covers the process and the procedure and I hope it is helpful to set out how it went from beginning to end. We are very clear that we do not encourage or support non-compliance with tax law or regulation. There has not been any encouragement. The policy of the bank since 1998 or 1999, as far as I am aware - the awareness piece is only as to the date it started rather than when it existed - is that we in no way target Irish-resident customers in respect of overseas activities. There is no policy in the bank in respect of that.

I joined the bank in 2010, and as we all know, the world changed around 2010 and 2011 with the recapitalisation of the bank and the introduction of €20.8 billion of State capital. I can talk to what happened subsequent to that but my knowledge and detail does not extend to what happened prior to that, in a different era and regime in terms of how the bank operated. The board changed as well as leadership team members. All the top 200 in the bank changed. The decision on the offshore business is reasonably straightforward. In 2011-----